


the wasteland and the flood (which is possibly just a river but the fear is always real)

by leeloo6



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Finding Love, John and Sherlock are in love, M/M, Post-TFP, fluff probably, imaginary porn, lalalala, mutual praise, rather clinical though, sherlock has emotional issues, this comes as a surprise to absolutely no one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-20
Updated: 2017-01-20
Packaged: 2018-09-18 20:10:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9401111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leeloo6/pseuds/leeloo6
Summary: Most things, if you give them enough time, will turn into their polar opposite. That doesn’t mean they're real, though.In which Sherlock copes with fear of emotional engulfment by various imaginary means, and John finds out.





	

“What is even the point of fucking?” he’d bursted out ten years before, when another human being had tried to get close enough to destroy him. He’d been haughty, absolutely sure. He’d brushed the man- a classmate, a friend, irrelevant- off from the first attempt of a kiss with godly self-assurance. “What is even the point of _you?_ ” 

Disgust, instant repulsion. A body close to his, pushing into the small, sacred space of his dorm room, leaving his smell, his boring self all over the place like a territorial mark. He hadn’t voiced it back then, he hadn’t even thought it, but now he knew. _I am mine._ He’d slammed the door shut and with it, himself.

It was something else with porn, something else entirely in his mind palace. Sometimes Jim would slip out of his chain and crawl on all fours all along the corridor, teasing. Sherlock was him and looking at him from the outside at the same time, he was the observer of scenes that he would have never brought into fruition. Jim- Sherlock- would open that door, last one on the left, right next to his mind palace drug den, and he would let himself pushed around and throatfucked by a room full of naked men. Sometimes they wouldn’t even be naked, they’d be standing in the middle of the street and Sherlock, the only one completely exposed, would take them like a whore in public disgrace. He would look down at himself from somewhere in the air, suspended, safe as unknown men broke into him, barely giving him time to breathe. Jim would be laughing like a maniac, _I told you so, little Sherlock just wants to be used like a slut_ \- then suddenly turning serious, _I want it uglier_ \- and the scene would slip into something more intense, fueled by uncontrollable lust and frenzy.

It was never anything else but ugly, anyway. 

He kept his heart far from it, split between the ones he loved. John, in every other room. Even _her_ , who had stirred into him something he could not name or label, a soft resistance masquerading as attraction- she was never there, he was never fucking her, he was never fucking John.

Well, he’d tried once, in that night after the wedding, when he’d gotten home and spilled into himself everything that he could find around the apartment- cocaine, booze, Xanax, tap water (disgusting). Out of his body and mind, he’d laid down and carefully unlocked the door to find them there. John in his military, looking him over like a soldier assessing his target. Irene, naked and exquisite, beckoning him. He’d let himself fucked by John over a table while he was eating her out, mindless animal pleasure, until something had clicked in his brain and he’d suddenly remembered that he’s a human being. The whole scene turned then into something apalling, profane, and he’d deleted it from the records, leaving his hard-on orphaned and turning his mind back on with the precision of a robot.

It was a fine line, the one between human and machine, and he walked it way more often than other people thought. There was no middle way, no compromise- he was either the hunted or the hunter, protecting himself with his shell of rationality to avoid complete destruction. Because that’s what human closeness brought- nothing else than dislocation of ego, a vulnerability more threatening than any bullet to the heart. To the scenes in his mind palace, he would get off furiously, as if accelerating to his own demise, then stop right before the finish line. _Uninterested,_ he’d say to himself. _Undeserving,_ he’d answer.

Everytime he tried to watch softcore, the emotion in the actors’ eyes, the affection and the intensity of whatever it was that they were building together, was enough to make him want to crawl back into himself and raise a thousand walls to keep that possibility out. It was vivisection, opening his chest and baring his heart to the wolves.

_Porn preference._

Gangbang, rape, rough sex. Bordering on humiliation, but not really. Double anal, double vaginal when he was feeling fancy. He loved the utter mindlessness and perversion of the human mind forfeiting itself and in the same time imposing itself on the act, pushing it to the limit, as if it could never be dirty or extreme enough. Emotion was drowned amidst the choking and the spaking and the moans, just a relic to the primacy of arousal.

Now, of course John had found it, his virtual porn stash. He hadn’t even bothered to password protect it because he trusted John- with not rummaging around his laptop when he wasn’t around, with rummaging around his laptop when he wasn’t around. For pretty much anything that he could think of, he could trust John with a good denouement. Except triple murder, of course. That was more of his area.

But John hadn’t quite got it, not this time.

Such a dull, uncomplicated world, one where watching rough porn automatically meant wanting to apply it to real life. Straightforward, earthy, John-like. No forward planning, no second thoughts. Sherlock had found him at his laptop, with a hand down his pants and his pupils blown wide. He assumed it was just a natural reaction to the video, but he should’ve learned by now that John was anything but predictable.

Sherlock dropped the glass he’d brought from the kitchen for a new experiment, freezing. Even so, it wasn’t a common occurrence to find your (straight) flatmate jerking off to gay porn of a certain variety. He was expecting John to blush, to excuse himself in that mildly awkward and strangely compelling manner of his, ready to hide the happening under the rug, but instead, the man just stared at Sherlock with that predatory look- exactly the one he’d had in his mind palace, now resurfaced and made into concrete- and at once jumped from his chair, pinning Sherlock to the door.

“So this is what’s in that head of yours,” he whispered, holding him with sheer force, as if trying to glue him to the cold wood behind. His voice was rough, heady, and his erection was very real and defined against Sherlock’s thigh. Sherlock panicked- accelerated heartbeat, cold sweat, dizziness, shocked at the backfire. He’d trusted John. “All this time, when people thought you just weren’t interested…”

“I’m not,” he replied, vaguely aware of the tremble in his voice. The world was starting to feel strange, unreal. “I’m not.”

John immediately backed off, removing the heat and the pressure of his body to let Sherlock breathe again. Sherlock breathed. He propped himself up on the door behind him, trying to shake of the dizziness.

“Jesus, Sherlock, I’m so sorry…” John started, pacing around the room. “I thought…”

“Not your strong point”, Sherlock replied, but the bite was an old one. He was shaken to the bone, he felt unclean, used. In his mind palace, that time at the cascade, John had saved him from… this, whatever this was. The sheer dirty for the sake of dirty, the deep waters of a shadow he didn’t want to know. Jim in his apartment, licking the gun. John had saved him. 

He noticed that he was still breathing heavily.

“Remember the game?” he asked, not looking at John. This, this here was killing him, but trapped in the amber of the moment, fight or flight, fight- there weren’t any more choices to make.

“Yeah? What?”

“The game, John. Eurus.”

“Of course I remember, it was one month ago-“

“Good. Then you should know. How can you not know?” he asked, speaking more to himself than to John, furrowing his eyebrows and thinking, _thinking._ Feeling. How can he not know?

“Know what?” There was no anger, just a fragile moment in which neither knew how to dance better around each other.

“That emotion is suicide for me, just like it was for her.”

They held each other’s gaze longer until they reached a moot point of equilibrium, after which things fell naturally into place and each took his place in their respective armchairs, the same 221B, the same Sherlock and John, only not quite, not quite at all.

“She hasn’t been the same since…” John started after a while.

“Yes. Exposing herself that way, allowing my presence in her room, overwhelmed her. Mycroft assumed that I am the…emotional child, as he worded it. He was obviously wrong.”

“All three of you are.”

“But it’s killing us, John, can’t you see?” Sherlock pressed his palms to his eyelids, no longer comfortably numb. “It’s killing me. What you just saw, that’s just…transport. Give a thing enough time and it’ll turn into its polar opposite. That doesn’t mean it’s real, though.”

“You moron,” John said, not without affection. He was looking at Sherlock with eyes that the detective couldn’t read, stranger eyes, not a stranger’s eyes, but those of a… “I meant that all three of you are wrong.” 

Sherlock sighed. “While your intention is to be appreciated, you must know by now that individual perception doesn’t subject itself to judgements of right and…”

His sentence was cut off by another leap, this time softer, slower. John’s lips reached his in a chaste kiss, not insistent like an erection pressing into his thigh, not all-consuming like the scenes spinning in his mind with terminal urgency. This time, it didn’t feel like a trigger to fucking, something to immediately ellicit a defensive response. There were only two seconds of panic- then, it felt like slipping into his suit for the day’s case, like having breakfast when he felt like being domestic, like going insane when he felt like going insane, only that now it was John’s lips on his, undemanding, a barely-there pressure.

It felt like being himself.

He’d loved this man for so long that kissing him only seemed a natural consequence of it. This, he hadn’t expected. It was always difficult to take the wires in his brain and send them out into the world, just like a little girl alone on the plane while everybody around her sleeps, but this? This was so familiar, so obvious. He’d wanted to kiss John since the first day they’d met, but had refused himself for lack of confidence in his own heart, consuming fear, a cancellation ticket to love. Now, though… 

Of course he wouldn’t understand the way Sherlock understood- the emptiness, the dangerous act of human interaction, a threat to emotional safe shores-, but Sherlock wasn't wrong for trusting him to understand in all the right ways that were his own.

It made him want to give back, for the first time.

He sunk his fingers in John’s hair, settling on the back of his neck as he lost himself in a completely different way. There was safety and maybe it was the illusion of safety, but right now, he was willing to take it at face value, feeling warmth not as an intruder, but as a protector. 

“Amazing,” he said after they parted. John smiled.

“Took a while.”

“No, I meant you.” Sherlock smiled, couldn’t help but smile with all he was worth as he looked at the man he loved. “After…everything, you’re still the one teaching me how to feel.”

“No, Sherlock. At Sherrinford… you were extraordinary. She pushed you to your limit, and yet after she put you down, you stood taller than ever before. You forgave her. I see the how you look at her when you play the violin together and I have to tell you, Sherlock Holmes, I have never seen more love in someone’s eyes before.” He let his fingertips- slightly trembling, it seems that he’d wanted to say this for a long time, but didn’t know how- roam on Sherlock’s hairline, on his cheekbone, down on his neck as the man closed his eyes, taking a deep breath. 

Somehow, this was more difficult than the kiss.

“John…”

“Yeah. Too much?” He’d started thinking of the moment before, when he’d had Sherlock pinned between him and the wall, so terribly close, but as hot and dizzying as it’d been, he never wanted to make that mistake again.

Sherlock replied by kissing him again, this time more self-consciously, with less abandon, but without any doubt. Now he would’ve wanted it all, all at once, not like in his palace, but like in real life, outpour of bottled emotions into everything that could ever happen between them, played on repeat. There was frenzy and urgency and terminal need all at once, but he couldn’t let it out. 

“Too little, too much, blurred limits, I want you,” he said, kissing down John’s neck. “But not now.”

“Not now,” John replied between breaths. 

“You…exquisite…human being,” Sherlock said, steadying himself in his centre again.

“You call a near-sexual assault exquisite?” John replied. Sherlock could read the remorse in his hands, his wrinkles, the movement of his body.

“It is what it is.”  
John pulled back, appalled.

“That was… my attempt at a joke.”

“Jesus, Sherlock,” John gave a nervous laugh, relaxing again. “Not your strong point.”

More laughing out of nowhere, foreheads touching. Sherlock felt lighter than air and comfortably heavy at the same time, anchored to Earth by this impossible, ridiculously possible man. 

The door to his secret room didn’t need a key anymore and through this, had lost its power.

**Author's Note:**

> ok so this is technically a draft, but I felt like posting it for reasons  
> I would really appreciate some feedback if you made it this far!


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